BX7G32 
.G8I 


J5X 

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The  Quakers 


AS 


Makers  of  America 


BY 


DR.  DAVID  GREGG 


THE  QUAKERS 

AS 

MAKERS  OF  AMERICA 


THIRD  EDITION 
1907 


FOR  SALE  BY 

FRIENDS'  BOOK  AND  TRACT  COMMITTEE 

51  FIFTH  AVENUE,  NEW  YORK 


David  Gregg  is  President  of  Western  Theological 
Seminary  in  Pittsburg,  Pennsylvania,  a  position  which 
he  has  held  since  1904.  From  1889  to  1904  he  was 
pastor  of  Lafayette  Avenue  Presbyterian  church  in 
Brooklyn,  New  York.  During  this  pastorate  he 
preached  on  successive  "Forefathers'  Days"  a  series 
of  sermons  on  the  "Makers  of  America." 

One  of  these  "Forefather  Day"  sermons  was  on 
"The  Quakers  as  Makers  of  America,  or  Ideal  Civiliza- 
tion." Two  editions  of  this  sermon  have  been  pub- 
lished by  The  American  Friend,  and  it  is  now  reprinted 
by  permission  of  the  author  and  publishers. 


The  Quakers  as  Makers 
of  America 


We  are  apt  to  think  of  the  Quakers  as  a  people  of 
peculiarities ;  they  are  before  our  mind  as  men  and 
women  of  broad-brimmed  hats  and  poke  bonnets,  drab 
coats  and  gray  dresses — a  serious  people  of  slow  move- 
ment; a  demure  people,  who  are  the  victims  of  their 
own  virtues.  They  are  a  peculiar  people,  but  behind 
every  Quaker  peculiarity  there  is  a  consistent  reason. 
The  Quakers  are  more  than  an  embodiment  of  oddi- 
ties; they  are  an  embodiment  of  great  principles  and 
an  incarnation  of  a  grand  life.  Both  their  principles 
and  life  have  entered  into  the  bone  and  sinew  of  our 
Republic,  and  both  are  still  necessary  for  the  realiza- 
tion of  ultimate  America.  The  reproduction  of  their 
spirit  and  purpose  by  American  citizens  will  make 
real,  by  and  by,  our  "manifest  destiny."  We  wish 
to  look  at  this  destiny  as  it  exists  in  germ  form  in  the 
souls  of  our  Quaker  ancestors.  There  is  nothing  more 
interesting  or  inspiring  or  profitable  than  the  experi- 
ence of  those  great  souls  who  have  helped  to  lead  the 
nations  up  the  heights  of  civilization  and  into  the  ad- 
vances of  civic  life ;  who  have  led  the  human  race 
nearer  to  God  and  into  genuine  and  abiding  liberty. 


1 


The  Quakers  had  such  souls.  Such  souls  looked  out 
of  the  clear  and  striking  faces  of  George  Fox  and 
William  Penn,  Elizabeth  Fry  and  Lucretia  Mott. 
Around  the  lives  of  such  heroes  and  heroines  the  his- 
tory of  the  world  has  turned  on  an  axis.  They  have 
helped  to  direct  the  main  current  of  human  thought 
in  the  right  direction.  You  call  them  single  souls, 
but  they  have  multiplied  themselves  into  myriad 
souls ;  they  have  become  a  people.  There  is  no  get- 
ting away  from  the  true  man  and  the  true  woman, 
from  the  single  soul,  if  you  would  get  at  the  origin 
and  history  of  great  movements.  The  tendency  of 
scientific  study  in  our  time  has  perhaps  led  us  to  un- 
dervalue the  influence  of  great  souls.  History  has 
been  believed  to  advance  according  to  definite  laws 
over  which  neither  human  genius  nor  human  freedom 
has  exerted  any  appreciable  influence.  Mr.  Buckle 
explains  national  character  as  the  result  of  circumstan- 
ces, and  he  claims  that  history  and  biography  are 
wholly  diflferent  in  their  sphere ;  yet  the  fact  remains 
that  persons  are  the  ruling  centres  in  history.  Take 
such  personalities  as  Augustine  and  Luther  and  Fox 
and  Penn  out  of  history  and  the  course  of  history 
ceases  to  be  intelligible.  Because  this  is  so,  we  em- 
phasize the  names  of  the  great  men  who  stand  chief 
among  the  races  and  peoples  who  form  the  constitu- 
ents of  our  Republic,  and  we  exalt  their  principles, 
which  form  the  bone  and  sinew  of  American  man- 


2 


hood.  The  Quakers,  when  seen  at  their  best,  stand  in 
American  history  for  ideal  civiHzation ;  and  this 
civilization  is  their  contribution  to  the  American 
Republic.  As  historic  characters  the  Quakers  are  a 
marked  and  influential  people  in  the  midst  of  the 
most  marked  and  influential  types  of  mankind.  They 
have  put  their  stamp  indelibly  on  national  and  inter- 
national life.  If  we  enter  into  the  courts  of  justice 
we  can  see  that  they  have  been  there :  the  substitution 
of  affirmation  in  place  of  the  oath  is  their  work.  The 
jails  of  humanity  show  the  results  of  their  reform ;  it 
was  they  who  changed  our  prisons  from  sties  to  sana- 
toriums.  The  dream  of  that  beautiful  prison  angel, 
Elizabeth  Fry,  is  being  worked  out  into  reality  in 
criminal  law,  and  the  remedial  element  in  punishment 
is  being  pushed  to  the  forefront  in  the  administration 
of  justice.  They  have  put  their  mark  even  on  the 
pages  of  our  Holy  Bible  and  have  made  it  a  book  of 
greater  power.  They  have  taken  some  of  its  grandest 
prophecies  and  statements  and  commands  and  beati- 
tudes ;  and  by  believing  them,  living  them,  trans- 
lating them  into  reigning  forces  in  the  home  and  in 
the  church  and  in  the  state,  they  have  so  made  these 
their  own  that  in  reading  the  Book  we  instinctively 
associate  their  names  with  these  Scriptures. 

The  Quakers  arose  in  an  age  of  dogmas  and  creeds 
and  persecutions  and  reforms  and  religious  revolu- 
tions and  quarreling  ecclesiastics.    They  took  their 


3 


place  among  the  ranks  of  reformers  and  were  the  most 
advanced  of  all.  They  were  the  liberals  and  radicals 
of  that  age ;  they  were  the  reformers  of  the  reformed ; 
they  undertook  to  reform  Calvin  and  Luther  and 
Knox.  The  Episcopalians  and  Puritans  and  Presby- 
terians protested  against  the  Romanists,  but  the 
Quakers  protested  against  the  Epsicopalians  and  Puri- 
tans and  Presbyterians.  In  the  language  of  Milton, 
to  them  'Presbyter  was  only  old  priest  writ  large." 
The  Quakers  were  the  Episcopalians  and  Puritans  and 
Presbyterians  of  the  seventeenth  century,  sweetened 
and  modified  and  made  over  with  a  new  and  a  large 
admixture  of  love.  They  denied  all  ecclesiastical 
rites ;  they  went  to  God  directly  for  their  instruc- 
tions, and  worshiped  before  God  in  stillness  and 
silence  without  prescribed  forms.  As  the  complement 
of  a  state  without  a  king,  they  offered  mankind  a 
church  without  a  bishop.  Their  aim  was  to  humanize 
Christianity  and  substitute  a  Gospel  of  hope  for  a 
Gospel  of  despair.  Sweeping  aside  creeds  and  coun- 
cils and  rituals  and  synods,  they  held  that  God  and  the 
individual  man,  living  in  loving  fellowship,  were  suffi- 
cient. They  simplified  things  in  a  wholesome  way 
and  struck  for  an  all-round  liberty.  This  was  Ameri- 
canism before  its  day;  this  was  Americanism  out- 
Americanized.  They  were  a  people  of  great  moral 
purpose.  Their  ideals  were  their  inspiration,  and  the 
realization  of  these  ideals  was  their  goal.    They  got 


4 


their  strength  from  ideals  and  convictions  and  visions 
of  which  the  senses  take  no  cognizance.  James  Free- 
man Clarke  calls  them  the  "English  Mystics."  If 
they  were  mystics,  they  were  exceedingly  practical 
mystics.  They  were  one  of  the  most  independent 
people  among  all  the  races.  They  differed  from  all 
the  sects  around  them  in  that  they  renounced  the  use 
of  all  force  in  the  propagation  of  their  principles. 
They  inculcated  and  practised  religious  toleration. 
They  have  the  honor  of  being  one  of  the  few  divisions 
of  Christendom  against  which  the  charges  of  cruelty 
and  selfishness  and  love  of  power  cannot  be  brought. 
Their  gun  was  a  protest,  their  bullet  a  principle,  and 
their  power  the  inner  light.  They  ser^'ed  the  church 
and  state  by  what  they  were.  Their  method  of  push- 
ing their  faith  was  to  be  what  they  believed  and  then 
assert  themselves.  They  exalted  the  passive  virtues. 
This  was  the  method  of  Jesus  Christ.  All  which 
Jesus  ever  did  in  this  world  was  to  assert  Himself  and 
suffer.  When  violence  was  used  against  them  their 
principle  of  action  was,  never  retaliate.  Their  method 
of  growth  was  by  patience  and  perseverance  and  quiet 
suffering,  and  their  method  was  effective.  For  ex- 
ample, they  carried  their  religion  in  the  INlassachu- 
setts  colony  and  planted  it  right  in  the  midst  of  the 
hard-headed  Puritans.  The  Puritans  persecuted 
them,  whipped  them,  robbed  them,  hung  them,  but 
they  kept  right  on  asserting  themselves  and  suffering 


5 


until,  by  their  patience,  they  wore  out  the  cruelty  of 
the  Puritans  and  brought  the  Puritan  scourge  and 
scaffold  into  public  disgrace.  The  public,  won  over 
to  them  by  their  beautiful  spirit,  rose  and  demanded 
the  cessation  of  persecution.  Thus  they  purchased 
and  established  for  us  by  their  sufferings  the  religious 
toleration  which  now  exists  in  our  Republic.  They 
served  America  by  patiently  suffering.  Their  mar- 
tyrdom was  like  the  martyrdom  of  the  church  of  the 
catacombs,  of  which  history  tells  us  in  thrilling  words. 
The  church  of  the  catacombs  was  the  kingdom  of  God 
in  sackcloth,  working  underground,  along  channels 
and  galleries  of  rock,  to  overthrow  and  replace  the 
armed  empires  above.  The  Quakers  were  content  to 
be  in  the  minority  on  every  great  question  until  by 
self  assertion  and  honest  argument  and  right  living 
they  could  win  men  enough  to  their  side  to  make  them 
the  majority.  In  the  first  days  their  ways  and  prin- 
ciples spelled  anarchy,  but  by  the  slow  education  of 
centuries,  and  by  the  beneficial  changes  which  they 
wrought,  they  now  spell  righteousness,  peace,  love. 
You  see,  I  am  giving  the  bright  and  beautiful  side  of 
the  Quaker  story:  I  am  telling  what  they  contributed 
by  way  of  strength  and  glory ;  I  am  speaking  of  them 
as  the  children  of  light,  shining  with  the  celestial 
beauty  of  a  Christ-like  spirit.  In  telling  the  story  of 
the  Quakers  there  is  only  one  starting  point — we  must 
start  with  George  Fox.    He  is  to  Quakerism  what 


6 


Christ  is  to  Christianity,  its  incarnation.  In  him  we 
find  the  traits  and  principles  and  hopes  and  methods 
and  life  of  Quakers  at  their  best.  He  represents  the 
heroic  age  of  the  Quakers.  He  gave  Quakerism  as  a 
life  and  started  it  out  on  its  thrilling  career  to  march 
through  England  and  Holland  and  America.  This 
has  been  the  order  and  growth  of  Quakerism :  George 
Fox  gave  the  world  a  Quaker  life.  Robert  Barclay 
took  the  doctrines  and  principles  and  purposes  out  of 
which  that  Quaker  life  was  constructed  and  built  these 
into  a  terse,  clear,  logical  Quaker  system.  It  was 
necessary  to  build  such  a  theological  system  for  the 
purpose  of  defense  under  attack  and  misrepresenta- 
tion, and  as  a  fair  treatment  of  the  public.  This  for- 
mulated the  Quaker  system  Edward  Burroughs  took 
and  carried  out  to  the  world  and  expounded  and 
preached,  and  by  the  conversions  which  he  made  built 
up  into  a  Quaker  society.  Then  came  William  Penn 
who  took  the  life  of  Fox,  and  the  system  of  Barclay, 
and  the  converts  of  Burroughs,  and  built  all  into  a 
Quaker  commonwealth,  which  gave  Quakers  the  civil 
embodiment  of  their  cherished  ideals  and  which  gave 
America  the  powerful  colony  of  Pennsylvania,  a  bul- 
wark in  the  defense  of  freedom.  After  this  came 
John  Greenleaf  Whittier,  who  took  the  common- 
wealth and  the  converts  and  the  system  and  the  life 
and  beautified  all.  With  chiseled  words  and  sculp- 
tured cadences  he  built  Quakerism  into  a  cathedral- 

7 


like  poem  of  liberty,  full  of  reverence  for  God  and  of 
appreciation  of  man  and  of  praise  for  the  truth. 
George  Fox,  who  was  the  spiritual  father  of  the 
Quakers,  was  born  in  1624.  This  makes  him  a  child 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  Did  he  rise  to  power  in 
that  century?  Was  he  so  endowed  and  did  he  assert 
himself  as  to  make  for  himself  an  immortal  name 
among  immortal  men?  If  so,  he  was  a  man  among 
men.  That  was  a  powerful  century  and  brought 
forth  wonderful  products.  It  was  a  century  when 
every  weakling  was  relegated  to  obscurity;  for 
George  Fox  to  make  his  mark  in  that  century  is  all  the 
evidence  required  to  prove  him  a  great  man.  This 
was  the  century  of  great  religious  wars ;  this  was  the 
century  of  great  books  and  measures  and  men.  If 
you  except  the  Bible,  the  most  democratic  books  ever 
published  were  published  in  this  century.  Cervantes 
published  ''Don  Quixote,"  which  set  all  the  world 
laughing  at  sham  aristocracies  and  mock  heroisms; 
that  book  helped  to  turn  away  the  human  mind  from 
the  worship  of  the  false  and  artificial.  Shakespeare's 
dramas  were  published  then;  his  works  tended  to- 
ward human  equality;  they  made  kings  and  queens 
only  men  and  women  like  their  subjects.  Bacon's 
works  were  published  then;  these  taught  men  to  feel 
it  not  only  their  right,  but  their  duty,  to  look  with 
eyes  undimmed  by  a  church  creed  at  all  things  which 
the  Lord  had  created.   Bacon's  works  made  it  possible 


8 


for  Newton  to  open  the  heavens,  Watt  the  air,  Lyell 
the  earth,  and  Darwin  animal  Hfe.  **The  Pilgrim's 
Progress"  was  published  in  that  centur}-;  so  was 
"Paradise  Lost,"'  so  was  Baxter's  ''Saint's  Rest,"  and 
so  w^as  the  authorized  version  of  the  Bible,  which  gave 
the  Book  to  the  common  people.  The  Book  is  the 
ever-enduring  ^lagna  Charta  of  civil  and  religious 
liberty.  This  was  the  century  of  the  Westminster 
diiines,  with  their  catechism  and  confession  of  faith. 
THs  was  the  centur}^  of  Cromwell's  guns.  Can 
Ge»rge  Fox  rise  in  this  century?  Can  he  in  this  cen- 
tury found  a  sect  which  shall  live  and  prevail  and 
modfy  society,  and  add  freedom  to  freedom,  and  in- 
augurate reforms  which,  when  carried  out,  will  realize 
the  Heal  civilization?  Can  he  lead  in  the  strike  for 
independence  in  an  age  when  the  whole  trend  of 
thing*  is  toward  independence  ?   He  does. 

Geo-ge  Fox  had  a  profound  sense  of  the  length  and 
breadti  of  the  love  which  God  had  for  mankind,  and 
this  rmde  him  the  philanthropist  he  was.  "All  men 
are  menbers  of  the  family  of  the  All  Father  and  are 
brother!."  In  his  journal  he  says:  "I  saw  the  in- 
finite lore  of  God."  God's  love  to  man  inspired  his 
doing  g(t)d  to  all  men;  hence  he  inaugurated  help  for 
the  helpless  and  led  in  prison  reforms  and  charities, 
and  in  th*  organization  of  societies  for  the  emancipa- 
tion of  al  human  brothers  in  slavery;  hence  he  in- 
auguratedtnovements  looking  to  the  abolition  of  the 


horrid  and  ungodly  practice  of  brother  man  shooting 
down  brother  man ;  hence  he  protested  against  im- 
prisonment for  debt  and  against  the  infliction  of  capi- 
tal punishment  for  minor  crimes.  From  the  brother- 
hood of  man  he  evolved,  under  the  teaching  of  the 
Spirit,  the  doctrine  of  human  equality.  He  msde 
woman  the  equal  of  man,  and  to  establish  her  equaity 
gave  to  her  her  full  half  of  the  meeting-house.  He 
argued,  if  men  are  equal,  why  should  some  be  greeted 
with  idolatrous  titles,  and  receive  obeisance  f'om 
others,  and  be  addressed  in  flattering  pronouns  ?  Vith 
him  every  brother  man  stood  for  just  one,  and  that  one 
was  no  better  than  his  neighbor;  hence  he  refused  to 
doff  his  hat  to  any  man,  or  address  any  man  as  ^your 
reverence,"  ''your  holiness,"  "your  grace,"  'your 
honor" ;  hence  he  called  men  by  their  Christian  name, 
treating  all  alike.  William  Penn,  following  lis  ex- 
ample, addressed  even  King  Charles  11.  as  'Friend 
Charles."  There  was  democracy  in  that.  Hmce  he 
introduced  the  use  of  the  pronouns  "thee"  anc  "thou" 
into  conversation  as  a.  protest  against  caste.  William 
Penn  has  built  up  a  grammatical  argument  for  the  use 
of  these  pronouns ;  "thee"  and  "thou"  are  singular 
pronouns ;  "you"  is  the  plural  pronom.  Why 
should  any  single  man  be  addressed  as  thoufh  he  were 
plural — as  though  he  were  a  regiment  ir  one?  A 
plural  pronoun  used  in  the  place  of  a  singuar  pronoun 
is  a  species  of  flattery  for  the  purpose  of  magnifying 


10 


a  man  or  a  woman.  Recognizing  that  man  is  the 
brother  of  man,  George  Fox  labored  to  promote  hon- 
esty and  truthfulness  between  man  and  man.  This 
led  him  to  secure  a  fixity  of  price  for  goods  in  all  the 
trades,  a  custom  which  is  now  established.  This  led 
to  simplicity  of  speech  in  conversation.  He  argued 
for  the  abolition  of  the  oath,  for  the  reason  that  he 
would  have  every  word  uttered  by  man  as  true  as  an 
oath.  That  honesty  and  truthfulness  might  be  made 
easy,  he  argued  for  an  all  around  simplicity  of  life, 
and  protested  against  extravagance  and  waste  and 
vanity  and  idle  luxury  and  the  senseless  change  of 
fashion.  Such  was  George  Fox,  and  such  were  the 
doctrines  and  practices  which  he  contributed  to  civil- 
ization. George  Fox  was  a  magnificent  freeman,  and 
he  introduced  into  the  world  of  thought  and  life  that 
genius  of  Hberty  which  was  calculated  to  make  every 
other  man  a  freeman  like  himself.  How  did  these 
legacies  which  George  Fox  contributed  to  America 
reach  America?  He  brought  them  himself.  The 
man  himself  trod  the  very  ground  we  to-day  tread. 
He  traveled  through  the  American  colonies  for  the 
express  purpose  of  asserting  himself  and  his  gospel  of 
liberty.  After  he  had  worked  out  his  mission  here  he 
went  back  to  England  to  find  a  grave,  and  there  he 
died,  saying:  "I  am  clear,  I  am  clear."  And  was  he 
not  clear?  What  man  ever  left  the  world  having 
done  his  duty  more  fearlessly,  or  having  declared  more 


11 


completely  all  the  counsel  of  God  as  he  understood  it, 
or  having  given  to  the  world  grander  ideals  for  the 
coming  civilization?  But  the  principles  of  George 
Fox  came  to  America  not  only  in  the  person  of  George 
Fox  himself ;  they  came  also  in  the  persons  of  his 
many  followers,  who  settled  in  all  the  colonies,  but 
notably  in  Massachusetts  and  Rhode  Island  and  Penn- 
sylvania. In  most  of  the  colonies  they  had  patiently 
to  work  their  way  into  recognition.  This  was  espe- 
cially so  in  Massachusetts.  The  first  thing  which  met 
the  Quakers  there  was  persecution,  and  that  from  the 
holy  Puritans.  This  is  one  of  the  stains  which  rest  on 
the  memory  of  the  Puritans.  It  is  vain  to  try  to  ex- 
cuse it,  for  it  cannot  be  excused;  it  can  only  be  ad- 
mitted and  apologized  for.  In  former  years  I  offered 
my  service  to  the  Puritans  and  made  a  special  plea  in 
their  defense,  but  I  now  beg  leave  to  withdraw  from 
the  case. 

The  Puritans  who  desecrated  temples  and  destroyed 
the  finest  works  of  art  are  not  the  people  to  condemn 
others  for  rudeness,  are  not  the  people  to  bore  the 
tongues  of  Quakers  with  red  hot  irons,  and  cut  off 
their  ears,  and  brand  their  flesh,  and  strip  them  naked 
and  publicly  scourge  them  for  the  crime  of  rudeness. 
In  some  cases  the  cruelties  inflicted  had  unbalanced 
them  mentally.  The  Quakers  used  no  force;  theirs 
was  the  strength  of  the  martyr  nature.  On  behalf  of 
the  Quakers  I  instance  the  letters  which  they  wrote  in 


12 


their  prisons,  and  the  words  which  they  spoke  on  the 
gallows,  and  the  prayers  which  they  offered  for  for- 
giveness of  their  murderers.  I  put  these  in  the  deadly 
parallel  column  with  the  Puritans'  cruel  laws  and 
branding  irons  and  knotted  whips  and  public  gallows, 
and  then  leave  the  decision  of  the  case  to  posterity. 
There  is  this  to  be  said  for  the  Puritans :  A  popular 
reaction  set  in  against  persecution,  and  by  this  means 
Puritanism  rectified  itself.  The  reaction  came  from 
such  outspoken  men  as  the  Puritan  sea  captains  whose 
story  John  G.  Whittier  forcibly  relates  in  a  poem  per- 
taining to  the  dark  colonial  days.  The  Quaker  power 
in  America  reached  its  height  in  the  coming  of  Wil- 
liam Penn  and  in  the  establishment  and  life  of  the 
colony  of  Pennsylvania.  William  Penn  was  second 
only  to  George  Fox  as  a  Quaker  influence.  The  terri- 
tory of  Pennsylvania  was  given  to  William  Penn  by 
Charles  II.  in  lieu  of  money  owed  his  father  by  the 
crown.  The  land  was  his  to  do  with  as  he  wished  and 
he  devoted  it  to  working  into  life  a  Quaker  common- 
wealth. There  was  no  man  better  fitted  to  establish 
such  a  commonwealth  than  William  Penn.  He  had 
paid  a  large  price  for  the  privilege  of  being  a  Quaker, 
and  this  made  him  a  man  to  be  trusted.  He  sacrificed 
the  friendship  of  his  home :  his  father  said  of  him, 
*'\^^illiam  has  become  a  Quaker  or  some  such  melan- 
choly thing."  He  had  ability;  he  was  educated  at 
Oxford.    He  was  democratic  in  spirit ;  and  his  defi- 


13 


nition  of  a  free  government  shows  this.  ''Any  gov- 
ernment," he  said,  "is  free  where  the  people  are  a 
party  to  the  laws  enacted."  He  was  a  kindred  spirit 
to  John  Bright,  the  Quaker  statesman  of  Great 
Britain,  who  for  a  whole  generation  was  a  leading 
spirit  in  the  great  movements  of  his  country,  and  who 
was  always  on  the  right  side.  John  Bright  got  his 
principles  from  William  Penn.  An  analysis  of  his 
public  life  will  show  the  Quaker  principle  of  civil  life 
to  be  this :  Political  power  is  rightly  exercised  only 
when  it  is  possessed  by  the  consent  of  the  governed 
and  is  used  for  the  welfare  of  the  community  accord- 
ing to  the  permissions  of  the  moral  law.  This  prin- 
ciple guided  William  Penn  when  he  organized  his 
colony.  He  gave  it  a  constitution  and  laws  full  of  the 
genius  of  humanity,  and  full  of  equal  justice.  He 
allowed  all  reforms  to  be  pushed  within  his  territory. 
There  was  not  one  good  Quaker  thing  which  did  not 
flourish  in  it.  Here  the  Indians  were  treated  as 
brothers  and  here  they  acted  brotherly  in  return.  The 
colony  was  a  temperance  colony;  it  was  an  anti-war 
colony;  it  was  a  colony  noted  for  its  religious  tolera- 
tion. For  over  one  hundred  years  the  Quakers  con- 
trolled it.  Its  homes  were  full  of  sweetness  and 
strength.  The  colony  was  one  of  the  greatest  powers 
in  the  American  revolution  and  furnished  such  leaders 
as  Logan  and  Mifflin  and  Dickinson,  all  of  them 
Quakers.    Benjamin    West,  the  great  painter,  was 


14 


born  here  in  a  Quaker  home ;  he  was  one  of  the  foun- 
ders of  the  Royal  Academy  of  Great  Britain.  The 
liberty  of  thought  granted  by  this  colony  bore  its  prod- 
ucts and  brought  the  colony  honor.  It  enabled  it  to 
grow  into  what  it  is  to-day,  the  second  State  in  the 
Union.  The  colony  gave  the  country  the  city  of 
Philadelphia,  the  one  city  of  the  Republic  which  rivals 
Boston  in  old  colonial  landmarks,  just  as  in  the  olden 
time  it  rivaled  Boston  in  that  leadership  which  inau- 
gurated the  American  revolution.  It  gave  the  coun- 
try Independence  Hall;  it  was  the  home  of  the  Con- 
tinental congress.  Here  was  framed  and  debated  and 
publicly  signed  the  Declaration  of  Independence 
itself,  which  made  the  American  revolution  a  historic 
fact.  All  this  took  place  not  on  Puritan  soil,  but  on 
Quaker  soil,  and  all  this  took  place  where  it  did  be- 
cause there  was  more  freedom  of  thought  in  Philadel- 
phia than  there  was  in  Boston. 

The  part  which  the  Quakers  have  taken  in  building 
the  American  Republic  makes  clear  this  two-fold  way 
in  which  patriots  can  effectively  serve  their  country : 

I.  By  uttering  an  emphatic  protest  against  all  de- 
structive evils. 

History  can  ask  no  grander  illustration  of  the  power 
of  protest  than  Quaker  life  on  American  soil.  Why 
is  it  that  there  is  no  African  slavery  to-day  within  our 
borders?  It  is  because  the  Quakers  as  early  as  1688 
issued  their  protest  against  African  slaver}-,  and  kept 

15 


it  issued  until  the  nation  was  educated  up  to  the  eman- 
cipation proclamation.  But  mark  this:  They  in- 
vested their  all  in  their  protest.  They  meant  it,  and 
they  made  the  American  ^people  feel  that  they  meant 
it.  Their  protest  was  strong  with  the  moral  strength 
of  a  splendid  personality  and  a  consistent  life;  its 
power  was  moral. 

2.  By  keeping  before  one's  country  uplifting  and 
inspiring  ideas. 

We  call  guns,  swords,  powder,  forts,  iron-clads  and 
armies  national  powers;  the  Quakers  have  taught  us 
that  there  are  powers  beyond  these.  The  powers  be- 
yond these  are  right  thoughts,  high  ideals,  holy  visions, 
righteous  principles,  burning  aspirations.  These  make 
a  strong  manhood  and  womanhood,  make  a  strong, 
pure  state.  The  men  and  women  who  have  these 
thoughts,  ideals,  visions,  aspirations,  go  straight  to 
God  for  them ;  they  are  exponents  of  God.  The  ideal 
civilization  exists  only  in  the  plan  of  God. 

This  is  the  message  of  the  Quaker  fathers  to  the 
patriotic  sons  of  America :  If  you  would  render  your 
country  the  highest  service  and  lead  it  forward  to  the 
millennial  age,  be  an  intellect  to  your  country,  think 
for  it;  be  a  conscience  to  your  country,  make  moral 
decisions  for  it;  and  think  and  decide  within  the  lines 
of  God's  holy  law.  If  you  would  render  your  country 
the  highest  service,  be  the  Lord's  prophet  to  your 
country;  dream  dreams  for  it  and  see  visions  for  if. 


16 


It  was  Socrates  and  Plato  and  Aristotle,  men  of 
thought  and  of  vision,  who  were  the  promoters  and 
conservators  of  the  national  strength  of  Greece;  and 
it  was  Samuel  and  Elijah  and  Isaiah,  the  prophets  of 
the  Lord,  who  were  the  chariots  of  Israel  and  the 
horsemen  thereof.  Be  to  the  American  republic  what 
these  men  were  to  the  kingdoms  of  which  they  were 
citizens.  Hold  up  ideals  before  the  people  as  they  did, 
and  then,  like  them,  you  will  attain  a  civilization  em- 
bodying your  ideals. 


17 


PRESS  OF  STETTIN6R  BROS.,  N.  Y. 


